I have a few Star Wars fans in my life and my cousin (friend, sister, etc.) is a large one. Her birthday was in May and I knew exactly what to make her! Kristy at Quiet Play designed some amazing paper pieced Star Wars patterns which are up in her shop for free, including the AT-AT pattern I used.

I copied the pattern at 125% and hit my stash for some gray fabric. I used a variety of Konas along with gray and black yarn dyed Essex Linen for the AT-AT. With Kona white for the background I sashed the block in a forest green cross weave and black yarn dyed Essex Linen to make a 20″ pillow.

I used the same hidden zipper technique that I used for my Poison pillow to finish it up.

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My high school self would have loved to have owned Misty Cole’s Poison Bottle Quilt, so I was thrilled when she asked me to do the May block. I collected fun bottles and had them lined up on shelves that circled my bedroom, everything from vintage bottles to new bottles with bright labels. I have since transitioned out of the phase and only have 2-3 unique bottles floating around the house. This block was fun to make because it forced me to think about bottles in a completely different way.

The May blocks feature the Martin’s UBend (top) and Gilbertson’s Wedge (bottom). Based on the history, I decided that I wanted to both bottles to have a broken, fragmented look. I achieved that look two ways – UBend is a solid piece of fabric and Wedge is fabric made from green scraps. The blocks are appliquéd, which is a new technique for me. I densely quilted the shelf with horizontal lines and added some simple diagonal lines around the bottles.

Instead of turning it into a mini, I decided to make this a pillow for my chair at work. I used a new to me technique to add a flap to cover the zipper by following this great tutorial from Sew Mama Sew. I loved their tip of adding fusible tape to help with installing the zipper. I will be using that trick from now on with all of my zippers!

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Hindsight certainly is 20/20! After sporadically posting from March – October last year and stepping away from the blog for a bit, I am ready to jump back in! I realized that I needed to find my rhythm, the rhythm which has been missing since I left Philadelphia in August 2014 – I think I finally have things figured out (hopefully!).

In addition to being the first class I teach, this quilt was also the first one I put on the Handi Quilter at the shop. I freehanded an allover curvy meander and enjoyed every minute of it. I don’t anticipate putting anything larger than a runner under the walking foot of my Bernina anytime soon! I’ll update the post with finished quilt photos next week, I need to get it back from the shop tomorrow.

Wish me luck!

A side note: thank you to everyone who has stuck around and cheered me on on Instagram the last few months. If you missed it (on Instagram), we brought home a Great Dane-Weimaraner mix at the end of April. His name is Bex and he has 100% captured our hearts.